The Paris Enigma

9

_{reporter from The Nation}

Five days later Craig brought together in the Green Room the journalists who had defamed him. There was the, pale and freckled, who was never without a pad and pencil, as if at any moment the perfect sentence was going to jump out and surprise him. The journalist from The Tribune was a man about thirty years old, indigenous looking, who affected gentlemanly manners but it was said that when he got some good information, he sold it to the highest bidder. Another journalist, so tall that he spent his life bent like a question mark, worked for a newspaper in Montevideo, where the case had been followed with interest. There were also three people I had never seen before; I imagined they’d been sent by the Alarcon family.

“As I promised, the case has been solved. As we feared, Gabriel Alarcon is dead. His corpse was found in the basement of the Victoria Theater. The police are taking it away as we speak. The body was covered in lime to hasten the decomposition process.”

“How did you find it?”

“I cannot explain methods that would forewarn criminals and teach them how to proceed in the future so as not to leave clues. But I can tell you that Kalidan, as you know him, or Jean Baptiste Cral, his real name, was an epileptoid criminal who suffered morbid attacks, with a pathological fear of growing old. He believed that drinking human blood would keep him young forever. He was so sure that his crimes would go unpunished that he kept a trophy from each one of his victims.”

Craig opened a large, square box, like those that women use to store their hats.

“Alarcon was prepared to stop his crimes and, against my advice, became his assistant. He took advantage of his proximity to search for evidence about the murders; he found the collection of souvenirs from Kalidan’s victims. Unfortunately, he allowed himself to be dazzled by the magician’s skills.”

Craig pulled a dull medallion, a scapular, a bit of lace, and a lock of hair tied with a yellow ribbon out of the box. “These macabre treasures gave Alarcon the illusion that he had solved the case; but the magician discovered what he was doing and killed him. He drank his blood just as he had the women’s. Then he made the body disappear.”

The journalists took notes as fast as they could; Craig had shrewdly called this meeting at the end of the day so they wouldn’t have time to ask too many questions, since they were already due back at their editorial offices. The moment they left, the detective seemed to lose all his strength and he collapsed into a chair with his head in his hands.

It seemed best to leave him in peace, but I had a thousand questions. Didn’t I, his assistant, deserve an explanation of the method that had enabled him to reconstruct the story? Since he didn’t respond to my questions, I put my hand on his shoulder. Physical contact was something that Craig couldn’t stand, but I was experiencing a maddening curiosity, the satiation of which would make even Alarcon’s gruesome murder seem like a gift.

“It’s true,” he said, sitting up with a piqued expression on his face.

36^• Pablo De Santis

“The method. The perspective. Following clues. Salvatrio my friend, I am going to give you a lesson on the method that none of The Twelve Detectives can match.”

Overcome by that dark energy that now held sway over him, he dragged me out of the house. We walked at top speed: Craig, the insomniac, went first, with a lit lantern. After an hour of walking in silence I wished we had called a carriage. I made some vague remark and he responded by saying, “Rented carriages can’t take us to where we’re going.”

I was unfamiliar with those dark, disintegrating corners of the city. We passed a fallen tree and then a dead horse. His bones shone in the moonlight. Later that same night I saw something worse, but nightmares are capricious, and it was the horse’s empty eye sockets that haunted me for nights afterward. Farther on there was a shed, which was where we were headed. Craig opened the large door, without a key or a lock. Up high there were some broken windows that let in the moon’s white light. I thought I heard a whisper, but it was the buzzing of f lies.

In the middle of the shed a man’s corpse hung upside down. His feet were tied to a beam with rope. Craig raised his lantern so I could see it well. He was naked and covered in clots of blood. His inert, open arms seemed to retain something of the gesture he had used, night after night, in distant theaters, to elicit amazement. Beneath the body, there was a lake of blood that the dirt f loor was struggling to swallow up.

“He was slow in telling me where Alarcon’s body was. Up until the very last minute he seemed to trust that some trick would save him.”

“What are you going to do with… that?”

“As soon as the sun comes up I’ll go to the police station. I’ve already thought of how I’ll explain it, that I came here following the clues I got from the card players. The police are familiar with the harsh ways they punish cheaters. And thus ends Detective Craig’s Final Case.”

As I left the shed I had the feeling I was being followed by blue f lies. I couldn’t go back alone in the middle of the night, so I had to wait for Craig. I didn’t want to walk by his side. Thirty paces ahead, Craig, with his lantern raised, showed me the way. Even that light, for the mere fact that it had shone on the macabre sight of the magician, seemed to glow with the incandescence of corruption.

10

I went back to my father’s workshop and applied myself to the cutting of soles, which was my specialty. I don’t know if I mentioned it already, but Salvatrio’s Cobbler’s Shop only made men’s shoes. My father refused to touch women’s feet. He noticed I was gloomy and he tried to get me to talk about it. I implied that it was a romantic problem, just to reassure my father. He smiled with relief, “Once you touch a woman’s feet, all is lost.”

In the days that followed my mother insisted I eat well. She prepared stews with long noodles, zucchini, and beef. I couldn’t touch the meat.

One afternoon a short boy about twelve years old, wearing a blue hat that was too large for his head, entered the shoe shop. He asked for Senor Sigmundo Salvatrio and it took me a while to answer because no one had ever called me “mister” before. He handed me a note written in a woman’s round, careful hand.

my husband is in the hospital, suffering from an unknown illness. i need to send you on one last assignment. i’ll be home all afternoon.

There was no heading or signature, as if Senora Craig feared the paper could fall into strange, enemy hands. I polished my shoes with the black cream my own father made-and which, it was said, also worked as an ointment for burns and wounds-and left the workshop.

The maid opened the door and as I went upstairs, I looked into the sitting room, where papers and dust were piling up. On the top f loor Senora Craig, seated in a white chair, was waiting for me. The table on which she had her tea was like some sort of garden in winter; all the plants that surrounded it were dark and filled with thorns; the f lowers were f leshy and enormous. The maid rushed to bring tea and a sugar bowl. When I opened it and saw that it was empty, I feared that Senora Craig was suffering hardships due to her husband’s illness.

“Please, help yourself,” she told me, and I pretended to serve myself. Two or three white grains fell into the hot tea.

“How is your husband?”

“The doctors can’t find anything. He is sick in spirit.”

“Can I visit him?”

“Not yet. But you can do something for him. The past few days he has talked of nothing else. Are you listening?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“In Paris, this May, the World’s Fair opens. I imagine you’ve seen pictures in the newspapers of the pavilions, and of the iron tower being constructed. The Twelve Detectives have been asked to participate.”

“All of them?”